OCA Publications:

ORGANIC VIEW

A publication of the Organic Consumers Association · www.organicconsumers.org

Spring-Summer 2006

Organics and America’s Future:
Will We Take the High Road?

Thanks to green-minded consumers such as yourself, the sixty-year reign
of chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture in the United
States appears to be drawing to a close.
Demand for natural and organic foods is booming—23% of US consumers
are now buying organic products every week. In a recent poll conducted
by the Hartman Group, 75% of Americans say they have begun shopping for
healthier foods. Ten cents of every grocery store dollar are currently
being spent on products labeled as natural or organic.

The nation’s industrial, export-driven model of food and farming
has proven to be a disaster—for small farmers, the environment,
farm animals, and public health. This toxic system has polluted our air
and water, depleted aquifers, destroyed topsoil, released enormous amounts
of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases, driven four million family
farmers off the land, and ruined the livelihoods of hundreds of millions
of farmers overseas. It has engendered an epidemic of obesity, heart
disease, food poisoning, and cancer, as well as a wide variety of reproductive,
behavioral, and hormone disorders.

Strong consumer demand has created a shortage of many organic foods
and ingredients in the marketplace, including dairy, citrus, and meat.
The “high
road” approach to meeting this enormous demand would be to change
public policy so as to help North American family farmers and ranchers
make the transition to organic, with an emphasis on local and regional
production for local and regional markets, and fair prices and wages
for farmers, farm laborers, and food and retail workers.

But food giants, such as Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kellogg’s, General
Mills, Pepsi, Kraft, and Dean Foods, seem to think they have a better
idea. Business as usual for them means maximizing profits by lowering
organic standards, industrializing production, and outsourcing cheap
foods and ingredients from overseas producers. Since country of origin
labels are not required on organic (or conventional) foods in the US,
consumers are left in the dark about whether or not the organic soymilk
they just purchased came from US organic soybeans, produced under strict
standards, or whether it came from a plantation in China, where organic
standards are dubious and working conditions are abysmal.

The most glaring example of the corporate assault on organic standards
is in the dairy sector, where surging consumer demand exceeds supply
by 10-25%. Presently, 65% of organic milk is controlled by Horizon Organic
(Dean Foods) and Aurora Organic, companies that are blatantly violating
traditional organic standards by purchasing milk from large dairy feedlots
where cows are kept in intensive confinement, with little or no access
to pasture. These same dairy feedlots are also regularly bringing in
calves from industrial farms, where the animals have been weaned on blood,
injected with antibiotics, and fed slaughterhouse waste and genetically
engineered grains.

So what can we do? Besides voting with our consumer dollars, continuing
to educate the public, and pressuring companies and the USDA not to lower
organic standards, we must build a much larger and better organized network
of organic consumers. Over the past eight years we have learned that
organic standards can be preserved and organic acreage can be expanded,
but only if we are vigilant and make our voices heard, from our local
districts and grocery stores to the halls of Congress. This is why OCA
has opened a Washington, DC office and stepped up our lobbying activities.
We now have 400,000 subscribers on our email list, and up to 30,000 visitors
to our web site every day, but in order to keep Wal-Mart and the other
food giants in line, we will need to become far more powerful.

As we safeguard and expand organics, we must also deal with the larger
structural problems of American society. Greenhouse gas pollution, global
warming, and climate chaos, left unchecked, will destroy the ability
of organic farmers, or any farmers, to grow our food and fiber. The end
of cheap oil means the end of affordable food as well, unless we step
up our efforts to rebuild sustainable local and regional food systems.
As petroleum-based farm inputs and transportation costs increase, we
will no longer be able to afford energy-intensive conventional farms
or billions of dollars of imported food. Ten trillion dollars in Federal
debt, yearly military budgets of $550 billion, and an endless series
of wars will dry up the funds we need to convert our food and farming
system to organic and make our energy, manufacturing, and transportation
systems sustainable.

Out-of-control technology and corporations, aided and abetted by indentured
politicians, pose a clear and present danger to our health and well-being.
Increased market share for organic and Fair Trade products will provide
little consolation in an era of climate crisis, scarce oil, and permanent
war. In response, OCA is reaching out to other public interest movements,
demonstrating that we are willing to work in a holistic manner to raise
consciousness over a full range of issues. No matter how you look at
it, we’ve got a rough road ahead. Please join and support us in
this monumental effort.

Coming Clean: Protecting Consumers from Deceptive Labels on Organic
Body Care Products
Over the past two years, OCA has been working closely with a National
Sanitations Foundation (NSF) taskforce to establish new organic standards
for body care products. Currently, the only organic body care products
that are regulated by USDA are those derived from 100% agricultural ingredients
that bear the “USDA Organic” seal. In other words, if you
see a body care product on the store shelf that claims to be “organic” and
does not have the USDA seal, there’s no way for you, as a consumer,
to know how much (or how little) organic content is actually in that
product.
Only a few body care brands, at this point in time, have been able to
earn the USDA Organic seal—Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps being
the most prominent—although a number of companies are reformulating
their products so as to be able to meet the current standards for 95-100%
organic.

The process of creating organic body care standards has been difficult,
at times, with a number of companies attempting to make these standards
as lenient as possible, in order to maximize profits. We are optimistic
that the final proposed regulations will be strict enough to safeguard
public health, promote organic agriculture, and create market incentives
for more natural and pure products. For more information, see the Coming
Clean section on our website. www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/

A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

Standing at the Crossroads

As the season turns, we find ourselves standing at a crossroads of
enormous peril, and great possibility. The good news is that hundreds
of millions of consumers, farmers, and socially responsible businesses
across the planet are steadily making their way along a path of health,
justice, and sustainability—with organic production and Fair Trade
leading the way. These lifestyle and marketplace alternatives are becoming
mainstream. Even bottom line corporations like Kraft, General Mills,
Nike, and Wal-Mart claim they want to “go organic.”

The bad news is that corporate greed and self-destructive public policies
are still the norm. Indentured government and out-of-control corporations
have engendered a frightening storm of chaotic weather, diminished oil
supplies, war, pollution, junk food, dangerous unregulated technologies
(such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology), and increasing global
poverty. This “profits before people and the planet” mentality
lies behind the current move by large corporations and supermarket chains
to take over the organic sector, industrialize production, lower standards
(allowing factory farms and synthetic substances in organics), and import
billions of dollars of so-called organic foods from overseas “sweatshops
in the fields” such as China.

Increased market share for organic, Fair Trade, and green products
in an era of endless war and climate chaos will provide little consolation.
We are in a race against time to dramatically reduce greenhouse gases
and global conflict, and to turn our nation and the global community
toward health and sustainability. This great turning will require, as
OCA Policy Board member Vandana Shiva puts it, embracing “ancient
concepts of living together… connected to the Earth locally and
globally… reintegrating human activities into the Earth’s
ecological processes and limits.”

But this turning also requires us to collectively raise our political
voices, and get organized, from Main Street to the Middle East. In this
issue of Organic View we are happy to provide you with a report on our
efforts and successes over the past six months, as well as a preview
of our future plans.

Now, more than ever, we need your financial help to continue our work.
In order to maneuver around the roadblocks of the special interests,
safeguard organic standards, and build up a critical mass for health,
justice, and sustainability, we need to raise $200,000 in our summer
fundraising drive. Please send us a tax-deductible
donation. Thank you
for your support.
Regards & Solidarity,
Ronnie Cummins,
OCA National Director

Organics and Fair Trade:
Bringing It All Together

Consumer demand for certified Fair Trade products, including coffee,
tea, chocolate, bananas, and rice, continues to grow in the United States
and abroad. Hundreds of college campuses, hospitals, churches, and workplace
cafeterias across the country are now serving Fair Trade coffee. Even
corporations like Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s are getting
into the act.

OCA made a national splash on Valentines Day with a flash animation,
Slammed, encouraging consumers to switch to organic and Fair Trade flowers
and chocolate. Thousands of people downloaded OCA’s animation and
sent letters to chocolate giants such as Nestle and Mars, demanding an
end to exploitation and slave labor in the conventional chocolate industry.

Meanwhile, anti-sweatshop and organic activists continue to work together
to transform local government purchasing policies and contracts, redirecting
public tax dollars and local revenues into products and services that
embody health, sustainability, and Fair Trade. After OCA and our allies
convinced San Francisco officials to pass a landmark SweatFree “hybrid” purchasing
ordinance last fall, mandating the purchase of SweatFree, organic, fair
trade, and local products, community activists across the country took
notice. Building on San Francisco’s success, OCA and others are
investigating the possibility of passing similar laws in other cities
nationwide.

esponding to grassroots initiatives, Maine’s Governor
John Baldacci, architect of Maine’s SweatFree purchasing policy,
is calling on state governors to pass and fund similar laws to redirect
billions of dollars from off-shore sweatshops to local and regional businesses
providing a living wage and humane working conditions.

On the national level, the Organic Consumers Association is working
with a broad-based coalition called the Domestic Fair Trade Working Group
to develop a new set of standards and certification for foods and products
that are both organic and “Fair Made” or Fair Trade. This
new label and certification system will alert consumers to give preference
to products that are not only healthy and organic, but also guaranteed
to provide a Fair Deal for workers up and down the production and supply
chain. In addition, this organic & Fair Made label can serve as an
insurance policy, should USDA Organic standards degenerate beyond acceptable
levels. Current USDA Organic standards require neither equitable labor
practices nor Fair Trade prices and wages, which is a major reason why
big companies jumping into organics are routinely canceling orders from
North American farmers, and instead importing cheap products from China,
where sweatshops in the fields and factories are the norm.

OCA Turns Up the
Heat in Congress

Besides working to maintain strict organic standards, OCA’s Washington
office and our allied lobbying organization, the Organic Consumers Fund,
have developed a full legislative agenda to protect and expand organic
agriculture.

Among our lobbying priorities is Organic Fair Share, which calls for
a fair share of USDA subsidies and funds for organic and transition to
organic programs. Organics generate $15 billion annually, or 2.5% of
all grocery store sales, but receive little or no federal support. In
2005, non-organic farmers, mainly large farms, gobbled up $25 billion
in federal crop subsidies, while organic farmers got less than $5 million.
An Organic Fair Share of subsidies should amount to at least $500 million.
With a yearly budget of $90 billion (our tax dollars), the USDA can afford
a Fair Share for organics and help thousands of American farmers make
the transition to organic so we can meet our growing appetite for organic
food and fiber.

Other legislative priorities include:

Pressuring Congress to reauthorize a 2002 law requiring
mandatory “country
of origin” labels for food.

Working to reform the 2007-2012 Farm Bill so as to cut billions
of dollars in wasteful “pork-barrel” subsidies for factory
farms and GE crops and use these funds to help family farmers adopt
renewable energy practices, develop local and regional markets, and
convert to organic.

Supporting increased allocations for food stamps so that
low-income families can afford to buy organic food.

OCA Campaign Progress Reports
January - June 2006

Stopping Chemical Industry Experiments on Children

Late 2005—early 2006 · OCA alerted our nationwide network
to a proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation allowing
industry to carry out experiments, using toxic pesticides and chemicals,
on children. After a barrage of 15,000 letters from OCA, and thousands
more from our allies, the EPA’s own Union of Scientists came out
against the rule. Reacting to the growing backlash, EPA administrators
announced they would ban chemical testing on children. Unfortunately,
after the media reported this change in policy, and public attention
turned elsewhere, EPA bureaucrats reinstated similar language into the
proposed regulation. The battle continues. www.organicconsumers.org/epa6.cfm

Eliminating Toxic Pesticide Spraying on Public Lands

January 2006 · OCA members and supporters sent over 20,000 emails
to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), protesting a federal plan to
spray massive amounts of pesticides, including known developmental and
reproductive toxins, on 932,000 acres of public lands, including National
Monuments and Conservation areas. In the wake of this controversy, the
BLM delayed its final decision on spraying pesticides until the fall
of 2006. OCA will continue pressuring the BLM in the meantime. www.organicconsumers.org/blm.htm

Banning a Cancer Causing Pesticide - Methyl Iodide

February, 2006 · OCA generated thousands of letters and phone
calls to the EPA opposing the proposed use of the carcinogenic pesticide
methyl iodide. In January, the EPA had indicated it would allow farmers
to apply up to 400 pounds of the carcinogenic chemical to each acre.
Methyl iodide is especially hazardous, vaporizing quickly and drifting
over large distances. Reacting to widespread media coverage and public
pressure, EPA backed off on legalizing the pesticide. www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_258.cfm

Defending State Food Safety Labeling Laws

March 8, 2006 · Despite vast public opposition, including 50,000
calls and letters from the OCA, the House of Representatives passed a
controversial industry-backed “National Food Uniformity Act”,
which would eliminate over 200 state food safety labeling laws. The law
would take away local government and states’ power to require food
safety labels on foods or beverages that are likely to cause cancer,
birth defects, allergic reactions, or mercury poisoning. The bill would
also prevent local municipalities and states from passing laws requiring
that genetically engineered foods and ingredients be labeled. In order
to become law, the bill will now have to go to the Senate for a vote.
As we go to press, it appears we have created so much controversy that
the bill will not pass in the Senate. www.organicconsumers.org/rd/labeling.cfm

Safeguarding Organic Standards

March 2006 · Organic Bytes (OCA’s electronic
newsletter) subscribers voted 96% to 4% in an online survey to launch
a boycott against two of the largest organic dairy companies in the nation,
Horizon Organic (a subsidiary of Dean Foods), supplier to Wal-Mart and
many natural food stores; and Aurora Organic, a supplier of private label
organic milk to Costco, Safeway, Giant, Wild Oats, and others. Horizon
and Aurora, who together control up to 65% of the organic dairy market,
are blatantly violating traditional organic standards by purchasing the
majority of their milk from factory-style dairy feedlots where cows are
kept in intensive confinement, with little or no access to pasture. These
same giant dairy feedlots are continuously importing calves from conventional
farms, where the animals have been weaned on blood, fed slaughterhouse
waste and genetically engineered grains, and dosed with antibiotics.
From last fall through the present, OCA has submitted over 50,000 petitions
signed by organic consumers to the NOSB, calling on the USDA National
Organic Program to put an end to these practices. After widespread media
coverage generated by OCA and the Cornucopia Institute, millions of consumers
are being alerted to this issue. A growing number of natural food stores
and coops have begun to pull these bogus organic dairy products from
their shelves. www.organicconsumers.org/nosb2.htm

Organizing Against Genetically Engineered Food

For eight years, OCA has campaigned steadfastly against GE foods and
crops, educating the media and the public about how gene-spliced foods
pose serious hazards to public health and the environment. Over the past
year we’ve been trying to stop the biotech industry and the Farm
Bureau from ramming through “Monsanto Preemption” laws in
several states. These laws take away the rights of local and county governments
to ban GE crops. Joint efforts with our allies have stopped preemption
legislation in a number of states, including California, North Carolina,
and Nebraska, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, these anti-consumer
laws have passed in 15 other states. Determined to turn the tide, OCA
has decided to pressure Congress to pass a mandatory labeling law for
GE foods, similar to the law in effect in the European Union. In the
EU, mandatory labeling has basically driven GE foods and foods off the
market. A recent USDA poll found that 83% of Americans support mandatory
labels for GE food. Although the labeling bill, HR 5269, The Genetically
Engineered Food Right to Know Act, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich
(D-Ohio) on May 2, 2006, is not likely to pass Congress this session,
OCA has pledged to enlist over 100 co-sponsors for the bill over the
next year. www.organicconsumers.org/gelink.html

Pressuring Starbucks on Fair Trade, rBGH

June 19-25, 2006 · OCA will be organizing a nationwide week of
protests and leafleting at Starbucks coffee shops, calling on the corporation
to ban genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone milk from its cafes
and to brew organic and Fair Trade coffee on a regular basis.www.organicconsumers.org/Starbucks/index.htm

Over the past two years, OCA has been working closely with a National
Sanitations Foundation (NSF) taskforce to establish new organic standards
for body care products. Currently, the only organic body care products
that are regulated by USDA are those derived from 100% agricultural ingredients
that bear the “USDA Organic” seal. In other words, if you
see a body care product on the store shelf that claims to be “organic” and
does not have the USDA seal, there’s no way for you, as a consumer,
to know how much (or how little) organic content is actually in that
product.
Only a few body care brands, at this point in time, have been able to
earn the USDA Organic seal—Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps being
the most prominent—although a number of companies are reformulating
their products so as to be able to meet the current standards for 95-100%
organic.

The process of creating organic body care standards has been difficult,
at times, with a number of companies attempting to make these standards
as lenient as possible, in order to maximize profits. We are optimistic
that the final proposed regulations will be strict enough to safeguard
public health, promote organic agriculture, and create market incentives
for more natural and pure products. For more information, see the Coming
Clean section on our website. www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/

CORPORATE TAKEOVER?

Some have said they welcome major corporate investment in the natural
food market, as vindication of the value of natural foods. We should
be concerned, however, that control of the natural foods industry by
fewer companies will result in multinational corporate control of organic
acreage and marketing, forcing out smaller regional/family suppliers,
reducing competition, leading to weakened organic standards… We
have already seen the political effects of media integration—once
there were thousands of independent radio stations and daily papers,
now there are a handful of TV networks and newspaper chains owned by
these same corporations. -Paul Glover - www.corporganics.org

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